Thursday, 8 January 2015

TweetLabour’s new
branch manager in Scotland has run into a little difficulty with his pledge to
use the mansion tax to fund the employment of more Scottish nurses.But I actually have some sympathy for him.

Admittedly, one
part of his promise was asking for trouble – promising to employ 1,000 extra
nurses, on top of anything that the SNP promise, was just plain silly.And the
implementation of his promise depends not only on Labour winning the 2015 UK
election, but also winning the 2016 Scottish election, a combination of
circumstances which looks more than a little unlikely at this juncture.But let’s ignore those (albeit far from
trivial) caveats and get back to the principle.

What has been
openly challenged, not just by the Tories but also by his Labour colleagues, is
more than just how he would like to see Scotland’s share of the money
spent.They’ve been challenging the
whole principle that revenue raised from a new tax which will, because of
property values, disproportionately come from one part of the UK, should be
redistributed across the UK, giving Scotland a share of the proceeds.

And that’s the
issue on which I have some sympathy with Murphy.He is, after all, merely echoing the unionist
line during the recent referendum on independence for Scotland, which was that
by remaining part of the union, resources would be pooled.Unusually for a Labour politician, he’s being
entirely consistent in saying that under a devolved system, extra cash will get
distributed, and it is for the Scots to decide how to spend their share.

What the
reaction has exposed however is how shallow the commitment of other unionists
to that principle of pooling really was.It was just a line which they could use to win a particular vote; they
didn’t really expect that they would have to act on it.